This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Roger Mooking’s Feedback: hip hop for grown-ups

By Rick McGinnisSpecial to the Star

Tues., July 9, 2013timer3 min. read

There’s a terrifying moment at the heart of Feedback, the latest album by Roger Mooking, that feels all the more devastating since it comes from the same man who’s been better known for at least the last few years as the affable, enthusiastic, unstintingly positive host of several TV cooking shows, and a celebrity chef in Toronto’s overheated restaurant scene.

At just past the midpoint in a lively hip-hop record where Mooking tells stories about living on the fringe of fashion’s high life, and gives us glimpses of messy romantic lives, the listener is suddenly confronted with the horror of a parent dealing with the deaths of their children, on a track that strives mightily to give you some idea of how gut-wrenching and life-changing that moment feels.

A lot has happened to Mooking since his last album, 2009’s Soul Food, and even more since the end of Bass Is Base, the rap/R&B trio that he made hits with in the ‘90s. It’s probably why Feedback feels so overstuffed: a record whose concept is no concept except how varied and unpredictable life can be.

There’s the frantic “Centerfold,” which name-checks brands, labels and fashion luminaries in a blur, like being buried under a mountain of Vogue’s September issue, and “Daddy’s Little Secret,” about illegitimate children and fathers who don’t hang around. City life gets soundtracked on “The Hum,” while the messy emotional lives of twentysomethings are the subject of “Must Have Been Love.”

Hip hop, now in its fourth decade, is in middle age and Mooking, for one, is happy to see the music he grew up with making room for different stories, and even an occasionally mature viewpoint on life.

“Jay-Z just dropped Magna Carta … and it immediately went platinum,” he says, “and it shows that he’s relevant, probably more relevant than 99 per cent of the acts out there. And he’s doing the music, respecting the history and the tradition, and also talking about where his life is now.

“He’s not pretending to be a 17-year-old kid like (Brooklyn rapper) Joey Bada$$, for instance. He’s not playing that game, he’s telling his life and his stories, and I think that it’s important for the art form, for it to continue to flourish and mature: it has to be able to respect the lives of the people who are actually making it.”

Mooking’s own record starts getting dark with “Life Is Fighting,” when he declares over and over that life “is frightening.” He proves it a few tracks later with “Oh My God,” using snatches of huge orchestral flourishes taken from movie soundtracks to tell the story of the children he and his wife lost, one in 2009 and one just last year, in childbirth.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN...

After admitting that “I tried not to write that song about 10 times,” Mooking recalls that “there really is a struggle, from moment to moment, for survival in a moment like that. It’s a lot of emotional pushing and pulling, and what you believe about the world and faith, and I really found myself questioning everything about what I believed in life.

“And I felt that the music had to be majestic and epic to, one, honour what I felt about the lives of my kids, but also to bring gravity to the moment, to express how huge that moment is in one’s life, but also the lyrics are so directly connected to my heart and soul that I wanted the voice to be front and centre, and the music epic around it.

“The song really crafted itself and I was just there.”

With a file from The Canadian Press

Get more of the Star in your inbox

Never miss the latest news from the Star. Sign up for our newsletters to get today's top stories, your favourite columnists and lots more in your inbox

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN...

More Entertainment

Top Stories

More from The Star & Partners

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com